“Unfortunately, for five years now, the Congress … has not adequately funded the Commercial Crew Program to return human spaceflight launches to American soil this year, as planned”, Bolden wrote.
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NASA announced on Wednesday, August 5, that the space agency will be forced to make an extension of its contract with Russian Federation when it comes to relying on them to fly their astronauts to the worldwide Space Station due to continuing reductions in funding requests by the U.S. government. With the political tensions mounting again between Russian Federation and the United States, it is understandable that NASA wants to find a replacement for the shuttle program, in order to ferry their astronauts back and forth between Earth and the worldwide Space Station.
The new contract extends U.S. reliance on Russian spacecraft through 2019, The Hill reports. As a result, NASA crew members rely on being transported by the Russian Soyuz spacecraft, which costs about $70 million a seat.
Nasa administrator Charles Bolden warned Congress in a letter on Wednesday that Boeing and SpaceX may not be ready by the end of 2017 to carry out a plan to send up their first manned vessels if funding requested by President Barack Obama is not granted in the 2016 budget. NASA needed the cash to assist personal area corporations Area X and Boeing pay for brand spanking new rockets and capsules that might launch from the U.S.
However, SpaceX’s recent attempts to launch resupply vehicles to the ISS have not been entirely successful.
NASA had hoped to begin US flights by 2017, but House and Senate budget proposals for the fiscal year beginning on October 1 would short the agency’s Commercial Crew Program, likely resulting in additional delays and higher costs, Mr Bolden wrote.
In the House version also approved by committee and heading to the floor, commercial crew would get $1 billion.
However, SpaceX’s recent cargo resupply launches to the ISS ended in failure as the Falcon 9 rocket which is carrying supplies such as food, water and scientific payload, exploded in June, moments after its launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida.
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But those achievements won’t be possible without adequate funding, according to Bolden. The contract was signed amid a lack of Congressional funding.
